This Rare, Rich Night
by djarum99
Summary: Title from D.H. Lawrence's poem Liaisons, one inspiration for this story, along with my squint-sideways-quick-you'll-miss-it interpretation of Loki/Sif canon interactions. This is set many years post-Thor TDW, an exploration of what coming home might mean to icons of Chaos and War. Mish-mashed mythology, symbolism, sexing and mischief, because Loki. Loki/Sif.


It matters little that she knows how this will end, this dance of hart and hunter in the lush concealing dark. Sif knows these forests, Asgard's wild peaks, as intimately as she knows the curve of her bow, the blood-lore of the kill. She knows Loki, as well as any woman knows a man formed from motes of stardust. She knows his body's secrets, the lethal bite of his knives.

Tonight, she will bare her throat.

Knowing _this,_ an arrowed truth shaft-deep in her heart, means forsaking all safety, all that she was and will be.

_Sif had curled beneath her bedclothes after the Winter Night's feasting, after too much new mead, and woke with his latest gift woven through her dream lax fingers. Loki's image came unbidden, sly and slender, a green-eyed fox cloaked in her room's familiar shadows. His talisman slithered from her palm as she raised a hand to brush off sleep - head pounding, she leaned down to retrieve it from the silver folds of last night's finery. She recognized his challenge, made a hundred times before (she has kept every token he has left at her bedside, hidden them away with his secrets and her scars) - but this time it is different. This time, he's raised the stakes, and they may not survive this night. Damn him to all Hel's cold fury. As the stable swallows welcomed dawn, she saddled a horse and road for daybreak._

Morning light brings memories, of the rough-tumble pack of her childhood's companions, their clumsy play at war's heroics. Of him, a boy always on the outskirts, watching with his changeling's eyes. Watching her. She had been first to notice his magic, and first to tease him whenever he failed to prove its master. He did not fail for long. By the time she donned a warrior's armor, her own skill still sapling-green, magic swirled in his wake like water, gilded by a damning sun, a fatal light, for he had not yet mastered wisdom, the dark places of his soul. And so, with his father's lie he fell, taking with him a piece of her soul she had not thought was his to hold.

Or perhaps she had known, all along. This seemed a time for truth, if truth had any bearing on falling into the arms of the Liesmith. Falling, flying, shattering like mirrors in his bed, in hers, making each other whole with shaking hands and mingled breath. Loki had been first to taste what other men had tried to steal, first to lie with her in sweat damp sheets and whisper tales of future glory - her own, in war, and his, behind the throne. She had chosen him because he never sought to claim her, because of the hunger in his eyes when first she kissed him, blood still slick on her leathers and battlefield dust still thick on her skin. Because he was dangerous, in a way no enemy ever could be, quicksilver enchantment gliding cool between her thighs.

_Vanaheim, centuries ago, a desolate beach, and Loki's eyes are bold with promise. He takes her hand, pulls her behind him to the cliff face, to the maw of a dark hollow where wicked diamonds wink inside._

_"I stole my brother's lightning to make this. For you," he says, "for this night," and his mask slips for one bright moment, the question on his face a sword, plunging deep. The ache is like nothing she's known, clawing raw and frantic beneath her ribs. She wants to push him away, to cry out the answer he craves._

_The walls of the small cave are made of glass, iridescent and fragile, smooth against her palm. Sif fumbles at leather and buckles, strips him moonlight bare, takes him in her mouth. And oh, his skin, sea-foam pale, the taste of his salt, the sound in his throat as she drinks him down - they crash together and splinter, reform and break again. By morning, their crystalline shelter bears a spider's web of cracks._

Mid-afternoon and the sun holds sway - Sif dismounts by a stream fed with mountain ice and snow, drinks deep, knowing water alone cannot quench her weary thirst. She spurs her horse on, remembering the taunting laughter of his ghost. Her grief in believing him dead had been a maelstrom scouring her bones, hidden from other's view, as was the anger that followed his return. Sif had honed her soul on his betrayal until its edge shone bright and clean.

_His dungeon cell, Asgard's golden ruin above, her boots hollow echo on stones worn smooth by despair. This day may well be her last and she refuses to question her choice, her need, his mocking shade. The guards are distracted, grant entry before her deceit can fully take wing (lying has never been her art, but she has learned, oh, she has learned). Once glance tells her that he knows Frigga is gone, that the man she knew is…not gone, but in fragments._

_"Come to kill me, my lady, ahead of the crowd? Does Odin tire of this game, without his Queen to stay his hand?"_

_Beneath the rage, the cold, his patchwork veneer of illusion, Loki lies in tatters and she cannot meet his eyes. Sif seeks his flesh instead. Muscle and bone and bruises, harsh shadows on new fallen snow, and her fingers seek purchase, dig in without mercy. She fucks him on a floor littered with broken glass, each thrust of his hips, every moan mirrored in a hundred icy shards. After, they both lie bleeding._

_"Death at your hands, Sif, would be sweet indeed, but an afterthought, no victory in it. Do not return to me." She kisses him, the only kiss she takes this day, and his mouth tastes of her and of copper, bittersweet._

_"You are no longer my king. I will choose my own road."_

_His laughter is a fall of withered leaves, lingering in her ears long after she abandons him to his cage._

_Sif ignores the guards' cautious scrutiny, makes her way upward, breath catching in her throat as Thor rounds a corner and sweeps past her on the stairs. Calloused fingers brush her own without breaking stride or silence – Thor searches for his brother, knows that she has done the same. She wonders if he always knew, if he knows that he will never find the man they both once loved. _

After Midgard, after his return, his escape and banishment, as no man's son and no one's lover... For years Loki had wandered the Nine Realms, the dark places lost to knowledge, pulling at loose threads, splitting seams, weaving the Worlds' fabric anew on a whim. Or perhaps not. Long life bears the blessed curse of hindsight, and over time his mischief divulged a pattern, a faint but cunning warp and weft. Ancient alliances eroded, reins of power snapped, and the seeds of turmoil sown by Loki's fine hand bore strange and honeyed fruit. Loki serves Chaos (when it suits him), and she War (the maiden chose a blood red road) – their paths overlap within symmetry's great map, by necessity, linked by the iron that binds all, forged in the roots of the Tree. They share a history, desire, flesh and solace, a need to walk the shadows between the darkness and the light. They share much more than that, something Sif can name, holds tight and true in her heart.

And now, he has found his way back to Asgard. Thor has welcomed him, cautiously, as an advisor and as his brother. Loki lives in his old chambers, sometimes, disappears for weeks on end, rankles the guards, frightens the staff, and proves a formidable ally in matters of diplomacy and trade. Along his labyrinthine path, he has once again found her, as companion and comrade and friend of his youth, nothing more. A cheat, a falsehood, and Sif chafes against it – if he no longer wants what they had, she would give it an honorable death. Curses and blows and an ending in blood, not this husk of hunger and dreams.

It has been so long since last she touched him, too long…

The first gift he left after a night in her bed lies tucked beneath her armor as she rides (Sif cannot clearly remember the day, the year, but his touch remains etched in her skin). A feather, so black it swallowed sunlight. She pulls it from her tunic and hears the raven's call, harsh and insistent, floating above a path the undergrowth has nearly erased. The sound fades and circles back, born on wings formed of bone, or smoke and magic - she can seldom tell the difference and he mocks her for it, but that hardly matters now.

By the time dusk begins to soften the sun she stands amid pines decked proud in his livery, black and green and the tarnished gold of lichens. Sif's own colors meld with his, in the horizon's blood-red and the drift of autumn leaves. They have lain together across all the Nine Realms, but this place is theirs, though she will not speak the words, and he puts unspoken truth at risk. _Why? Why now?_ The trees whisper an answer, needle-tongued and cunning - _because truth is a liar's weapon, because he knew that you would come..._

He is here.

Shadows shift, coalesce, and he stands before her, so close she can catch his scent, winter's winds, the musk of seidr, the faint ocean tang of his sweat. He has waited here for her, too long.

"My Lady Sif. You look…windswept. Lovely." His smile a sinful triangle (the gods invented sin, who else?), and a question held deep in his eyes.

"Loki." He has long refused another title, save those she whispers in the dark. "You look…different. It suits you."

Her fingertips brush his face, trace the cut of cheekbone and jaw, sharp as she remembers (she remembers him as a boy, his cheek like the breast of a dove). Sif threads her fingers through hair that flows past his shoulders, bird's wing silk black as murder against the graying sky. He wears no armor, his leathers graced with gold at chest and sleeve, cool, and then warm with her touch – sigils, their pattern richest above his heart.

Sif has long thought Loki beautiful, but here, now, he wears beauty like a stolen cloak, confident, unashamed of what lies beneath. Sif wants to see, hopes that someday he will show her.

_Frigga's moonlit gardens, no longer a child and not yet a woman, and Sif is crying, stumbling into mud, the thorns of velvet petaled roses (the Queen is wise, knows beauty's price) and then into his arms. Loki is not yet a man, all angles and bone, more crane than nighthawk, but he towers over her and his body is steady, solid. A lifeline in grief's rising tide, and silent, just this once, for her. Her father lies dead on a Muspelheim plain and she has no anchor, no anger to guide her blade, no touchstone wall to rail against (you should marry, my daughter, bear children, wear a woman's silks and grace). Loki holds her until his shirt is damp and leads her back to her chambers when the tears have all run dry. Silent. The next day he is mischief again, all green-eyed taunts and jabs and fencing, a target for her pain. He never speaks of that night in the garden. Sometimes she catches his watchful glance, the flare of warmth beneath his smile, and knows he will never allow her to thank him for being exactly what she needs._

His lips hover above her own, one heartbeat, two, and the kiss is a shared victory, neither moving first. She slips a boot between his, hooks an ankle, and they fall – he conjures a pallet before they reach the ground. Furs, soft at her back, both of them naked with Loki's murmur, slick on his tongue and sweet on hers as she flicks it behind his teeth. He tastes of spiced mead and magic, and she cannot drink enough.

She can drink no more until she _knows_, and she rolls him to straddle his hips. His laughter warms his eyes, soft and hooded with want, the sound rippling against her flesh, low and sleek. The forest fades behind braziers filled with flames of green and gold, summoned for her to banish the night, the cold. Loki was born to drifting snow – he needs no heat save hers.

A need rising hard and eager between her spread thighs, glistening at its tip, as she releases his last gift from her clenched fist to lie shining and coiled on his chest.

"What is this, Loki? Why?"

Elegant hands play cat's cradle with a cord woven gossamer fine – red and silver, green and gold, a promise from the God of Lies.

_A wedding in the Great Hall, the last she had attended, and she cannot remember the couple's names but sees their faces still. Joy and hope, for a life she has foresworn, his left hand and her right bound together with the pledging cord. Blue. Their cord had been blue._

"You know perfectly well what it is, my lady. As to why….I want to see the sunrise, over Asgard, from your bed."

She rolls her hips, hears the catch of his breath, firelight reflected in his eyes and something more, something like hunger.

"Sunrise. In my bed. At the cost of this, this…constant?" A falsehood, surely, but beneath his deceiver's mask is a truth she cannot define.

"Chaos cannot exist without constants, without chains to break and paradigms to subvert. One of the irrevocable truths of the glorious universe."

"Glorious. And yet you attempt to destroy it, at every opportunity."

"Do I? I'm actually quite fond of this universe." Loki lifts his head, captures a nipple between cool lips, suckles, and arrows heat to her core.

"Why…why this, why now?" She lets desire take her as she always has with him, draws his fire into vein and bone, bends lithe and does not break.

His tongue maps her breasts and he strains upward, kisses her again, whispers against her mouth. "Sif, I need...I want..."

"You're going to have to say it, Silvertongue. I won't settle for anything less." Relentless, as she always is with him, palms stroking his cock, lifeblood and silk and hard promise, hot between her hands.

"I would join myself to you, and you to me. I would have a place to depart and return, to rest, sometimes. Often. Sif..." Teeth bared, sharp and white as the moon, he nips at her shoulder, her throat.

"Another bond for you to break? That seems so...common. Beneath your skill, your notice."

"A flexible binding. Unbreakable. One with no beginning, and no end - an ouroboros, if you will," he says, and his fingers curl to conjure a slender snake, green as his eyes and writhing, jaws clenched upon its own tail.

"You offer forever in the form of a serpent?" The snake disappears in a whirlpool of smoke, Loki tenses and even with that warning she is unprepared, finds herself flat on her back beneath whipcord fury.

"I offer myself, nothing less. I offer you this...,"and he cups her cheek, floods her mind and body with fire and ice, all that he was and is and will be, all that they are, and love. Love that keens and burns, seeks out all resistance ...but there is none. Her heart had welcomed him long ago, when her hair was gold and he was a prince and the future shone bright and wide.

She draws breath to fill her lungs, leans in to the shell of his ear. "There. That. Nothing less. Why must you make everything so complicated?"

"It is my nature." He grins, a wolf in the firelight, and she digs in her heels to reverse their position, strums the sharp flare of bone at his hips, fits her fingers to the lyre of his ribs.

"While mine is clear as the midsummer sky," she says, and tosses his glittering cord into the nearest brazier's flame. It curls, flickers to ash in the space of a heartbeat as he hisses, hands spanning her waist to shove her aside. Ashes in his eyes, the bitter flowering of ice, and she shifts her weight to hold him fast, takes his mouth, guides his cock to take him inside her.

He stills beneath her, panting, a war of pride and confusion raging across the planes of his face. "What is this, Sif? Ever the warrior, never a maid…you could not find a crueler path to 'no'? Your sword, your dagger…"

"Idiot. Blind…oh…fool," and she begins to move, hands tangled in his hair, nipples grazing his chest, tightening around the pulse of his lifeblood, deep within her heat.

"I'll give you no binding, nothing to break." It has been so long, so long, he fills her to the point of pain, exquisite, and she would burn the doubt from his green eyes with her body's unwavering sun. She could never best him with words, but she will use those, too, any weapon at hand.

"This is yes, with no cord to sever, because you would. Because it is your nature. Because I've been yours since that night in your mother's garden…remember, Loki…see…" Her knees slip against the furs and she seizes his hands to twine their fingers against his chest. Graceless, clumsy, but she finds a rhythm in his heartbeat racing beneath her palms, rolling her hips and sinking down hard to steal rasping breath from his throat.

He remains still against her onslaught, but something like hope is there in his eyes and she witnesses the moment it sparks, burns bright, misses the moment he makes a choice. The stars spin and she is on her back again, Loki kneeling between her thighs, grinning.

"You intend to fuck me into clarity, then? The plan has its flaws, but I like it," he says, and then his mouth is on her, cool as spring rain.

She cedes control because he needs it, because she has no weapons left. Stars blur as her eyes fill (a warrior does not cry), as she falls with a swirl of his tongue, the thrum of his voice murmuring sorcery, words she cannot understand. He enters her again before she recovers, her body taut as an archer's bow. Loki pulls her upright to straddle his lap and she rides him face to face, sweet and slow, until his lips part and his fingers find the place they join. He lifts her one-handed, shaking, thrusts deep once, twice, moans into her mouth as he spends and she follows. They collapse together in a tangled sprawl and he covers them both, flicking a wrist to send the brazier's flames yearning for the sky.

"This was…yes?" Loki's face is a study in restraint, but joy flickers soft in his eyes. Sif knows she has more practice in this, more faith in risking the cost. Life has not been gentle, but she has always known love, her family, her companions. She has never walked the worlds alone.

"Yes."

The pines sway, sing their night-song, and a raven chides the cold - a real bird this time, she is certain. Loki shifts and wraps her close, scribing runes upon her back, "journey" and "gift" and "need," other symbols she does not know. Their breath slows and he props himself on an elbow, splays his hand to span her heartbeat. The wind rises to stir his hair and she cards it through her fingers, finds hidden braids and his black feather, stolen from her pocket – thief, deceiver, paradox, he is all of these things, and much more.

"I remember, Sif. That night in the garden. How it felt, to be what you needed, how it felt when you let me. Like coming home." His mouth curves upward in a familiar twist but he wears no mask, just the look of a man braving wary steps on a lake's new winter ice. "I won't always stay."

"You won't. Nor will I," she says, and cups his face, kisses the hollow of his throat, lips parted. "Absence makes homecoming all the sweeter."

"Home. And the sunrise."

"Yes."


End file.
